Altamonte man gets pastor's kidney

For nearly four years, health problems kept Randal Miller up at night. When he went to bed, Miller had to hook up to a dialysis machine, which for eight hoursdid the work his failing kidneys couldn't.

His close friends knew Miller, 55, had kidney disease. But the Altamonte Springs man mostly suffered in silence and prayed that his name would soon rise to the top of the kidney-transplant list.

His pastor Todd Lamphere was praying for him, too. In October, Lamphere did even more: He gave him one of his kidneys.

The men first met in early 2012 when Miller attended a service at First Baptist Church of Altamonte Springs, where Lamphere, 51, was giving a sermon.

"I liked what he had to say," recalled Miller, also an ordained minister.

In the summer of 2012, the two traveled to Germany together on a missionary trip. While there, Lamphere, who was in the room next door, couldn't help overhearing the toll dialysis was taking on his friend.

"We'd be out all day; then at night, I would hear him in his room dealing with this," he said. "It's one thing to know what someone needs, and to pray about it, and quite another to feel what that person is going through and experience what it entails."

That's when Lamphere asked: "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Yes," Miller said. "You could get tested to see if you could be a donor."

Miller, who is married and has two grown daughters, learned he had kidney disease in 2009 and added his name to the national kidney-transplant wait list in 2011.

The average wait time for a kidney, which becomes available when an organ donor dies, is 41/2 years, said Dr. Bobby Nibhanupudy, transplant surgeon at Florida Hospital.

Matches for kidneys, particularly for those who have type-O blood, as Miller does, are not rare. What is rare is finding a live person willing to part with his.

"For a healthy person to put himself at risk and give a piece of himself to a friend or loved one is the ultimate sacrifice," said Nibhanupudy, who sewed the pastor's kidney into Miller.

Without a new kidney, Miller would have had to be on dialysis for rest of his life, Nibhanupudy said. And that life would likely have been much shorter. The life span of someone on dialysis is usually three to five years.

For Lamphere, married with three grown children, the blood test was the easy part. The harder test was when the call came telling the pastor he was a match.

"Then it was really put up or shut up," he said.

His reservation didn't last long. "I wanted to do it," he said.

Naturally he had questions: Would his health be compromised if he only had one kidney? No, people can live normal lives with only one kidney.

How long would recuperation take? It varies. (He was back to work in a week.)

The medical team had questions for the prospective donor, too, including how he would feel if the kidney he donated were rejected.

"No matter how well the surgery goes, rejection still happens," Nibhanupudy said. But those risks improve when the organ comes from a living donor.

The five-year survival rate of a kidney from a deceased donor is 66 percent, and from a living donor it's 79 percent, said Ellie Schram, spokeswoman for the National Kidney Foundation.

On Oct. 25, the two men were together in the preoperative area at Florida Hospital. Lamphere went first.

Soon after, a separate surgical team prepared Miller to receive his new kidney.

The first time Lamphere saw Miller after surgery, "he already looked better," he said. "His complexion was healthier, and his eyes looked clearer."

What Miller remembers is seeing his friend hooked to an IV pole recovering. Miller's eyes filled with tears. "I was so grateful."

Today, Miller's prognosis is "excellent," Nibhanupudy said. "His kidney function is fantastic." Most rejections happen in the first two months, and Miller is well out of the woods.

The men joke about the fact that Miller, who is black, has a "white" kidney.

"I never think about having a white kidney," said Miller, "until I want to jump," he said, referring to the reputation white guys have on the basketball court.

Lamphere is more philosophical: "Nowhere is racial segregation a bigger issue than in the church," he said. "While we know some people might think that's a barrier, it never was. Here are two guys who are brothers."